A new elementary school at the site of the former Cloverley school is still at the top of the North Vancouver school district’s wish list. But it isn’t on the top of the province’s priority list, trustees learned recently.
The provincial ministry of education didn’t approve the school district’s request for a new $21.6-million elementary school, which school officials had hoped to fast-track to deal with enrolment pressure in the area.
School officials plan to resubmit the request for a new Cloverley school in June.
For now, schools in the lower central area of the school district, like Ridgeway, Queen Mary, Queensbury and Brooksbank will have to make do with portables.
In June 2018, trustees put a new school at the old Cloverley site first on their wish list, ahead of a plan to build a new school in Lower Lonsdale.
Plans were changed after new housing developments planned in Moodyville, Lynn Creek and Seylynn areas pointed to growing enrolment in the area near the site at the corner of Cloverley Street and Hendry Avenue.
The Cloverley land also already belongs to the school district, so wouldn’t require the province to find and pay for a site, or go through a possibly lengthy redevelopment process.
The school district wants the province to build a “dual track” elementary school on the land with a capacity of 535 students, including French immersion, within four years.
Pressure has been mounting to get moving on plans for a new elementary school in the area as nearby schools are already overcrowded. Ridgeway is operating with a number of portables and school planners project enrolment at the school could hit almost 170 per cent of capacity within 10 years.
Queen Mary is also projected to reach an enrolment of more than 130 per cent within a decade.
To deal with that, school district officials are now looking into moving another portable to Queen Mary.
Cloverley has been closed as a public school since 1982. Tenants over the past 35 years have included the publicly funded parent-participation Windsor House school, francophone school Ecole André-Piolat, dance academy Pro Arte, and the YMCA.
The school district considered residential development on the Cloverley site in 2014, eventually commissioning a report that suggested a four-storey apartment and about 50 townhouses. However, no proposal was ever formally submitted to the city.
